Immigration Has Been, and Will Always Be, the American Way

Amid the swelling chorus of insane fury against illegal immigration, the Pew Research Center has released a huge survey of immigration patterns into the United States. It's a must-read for anyone who actually wants to know what they're talking about. Using census data gathered from over a hundred years, and projecting forward from that basis, Pew has produced a portrait of American demographics whose consequences are obvious but clearly need restating at this moment of weird, manufactured crisis: The United States is, was, and always shall be a nation of immigrants. Nobody is going to change that fact, no matter what election promises they make.

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As of 2015, the United States contains one-fifth of all the world's immigrants. And despite what many Republicans say, or imply, this reality is not the result of some massive criminal influx. It is the result of a conscious policy decision, the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which no candidate is even considering repealing. The number of immigrants in the United States is the direct result of that policy.

"Fifty years after passage of the landmark law that rewrote U.S. immigration policy, nearly 59 million immigrants have arrived in the United States, pushing the country's foreign-born share to a near record 14%. For the past half-century, these modern-era immigrants and their descendants have accounted for just over half the nation's population growth and have reshaped its racial and ethnic composition."

America, in its current form, is as much a country of foreigners as ever. Here is the key point though: Whatever happens to illegal immigration, no matter if Donald Trump manages to build a wall so high that it takes oxygen masks to scale it, the demographic trends are not going anywhere.

"Looking ahead, new Pew Research Center U.S. population projections show that if current demographic trends continue, future immigrants and their descendants will be an even bigger source of population growth. Between 2015 and 2065, they are projected to account for 88% of the U.S. population increase, or 103 million people, as the nation grows to 441 million."

America is filling up with more and more immigrants, and the new immigrants are going to transform the ethnic make-up of the country for good. But the common wisdom that this will lead to a bilingual country may be wrong. The Hispanic influx into the United States, which has earned the fear and loathing of Donald Trump and his competitors, is already diminishing. Instead, the majority of immigrants entering America are coming from Asia.

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"Perhaps the most striking change in the profile of newly arrived immigrants is their source region. Asia currently is the largest source region among recently arrived immigrants and has been since 2011. Before then, the largest source region since 1990 had been Central and South America, fueled by record levels of Mexican migration that have since slowed. Back in 1970, Europe was the largest region of origin among newly arrived immigrants. One result of slower Mexican immigration is that the share of new arrivals who are Hispanic is at its lowest level in 50 years."

So in all the debates about immigration that are going to happen over the next year-and-a-half, in all their furious dog whistling and all their monumental stupidity, remember this vital piece of data: the changing demographics of America are inevitable, and the consequences of conscious government policy, not the result of some wave of interloping fence jumpers.

Do I need to point out that immigration is the way America has always worked? It is already projected that by 2055 America will not be a majority white country. It will be a country without a majority of any kind. It will be a changed country but a country changing in the way it always has changed. America as a country of pluralities will be more American, not less. The United States will finally live up to its motto. E pluribus, unum. From many, one.

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